Making the case for the right to life of every innocent, from Lake County, Illinois

Friday, April 22, 2016

Brain Dead?- Really

Baby is born to mom 55 days after she is declared brain-dead

By Dave Andrusko

Saved:
Baby Wojtus’s mother died when 17 weeks pregnant, but as the baby was
still alive, her vital functions were sustained until he could be
delivered at a hospital in Wroclaw, Poland

The medical community in Poland is hailing it as nothing short of a miracle.
“Baby Wojtus” was born two months after his mother was declared brain-dead and, according to the Daily Mail, was recently discharged from a hospital in the western Polish city of Wroclaw.
The Daily Mail reports that Wojtus’s birth was the first to a brain-dead woman in Poland, and the sixteenth in the world.

The 41-year-old unidentified mom was 17 weeks pregnant when she died
of a brain tumor. She had lived a normal existence for a decade after
learning of the tumor’s existence, until she suddenly lost consciousness
and collapsed.
Sara Malm reported that the woman

passed away on the way to Wroclaw
University Hospital, but medical staff were able to stabilize her vital
organs before the foetus died.

In addition to be connected to a respirator, the mom was fed through a
feeding tube and given medications intravenously to “to fight off
infections and falling blood pressure,” Malm reported.
Andrzej Kubler, head of the Department of Anesthesiology and
Intensive Therapy at Wroclaw University, said, ”We had no experience
with such a long-term maintenance of vital functions of a patient with
irreversible brain damage.”

Staying
alive: Baby Wojtus was delivered 55 days after his mother ‘died’,
weighing just 2.2lbs, but has now been allowed to leave the hospital
with his father.

But, miraculously, little Wojtus was born by Cesarean section on
January 9 at 27 weeks, weighing 2.2 pounds. Doctors determined they
couldn’t wait any longer; he’d been in his brain-dead mom’s womb for 55
days!
Barbara Krolak-Olejnik, the head of the neonatal unit at Wroclaw hospital, told the AFP news agency, “It’s rare to successfully maintain a pregnancy for so long.” Ms. Krolak-Olejnik added, “Her whole family wanted us to try to save the child.”
Tucked away at the end of Malm’s story is this beautiful nugget:

According to local media,
Wojtus’s father had been living in the hospital since his wife’s body
was admitted, with the nurses saying that the father was very involved
in his son’s rehabilitation.